Matali Crasset

French designer Matali Crasset was born into a farming family in 1965 in Normée, near Châlons-en-Champagne, France. She studied design at the École Nationale Supérieure de Création Industrielle in Paris, graduating in 1991. Crasset worked for a few years in Milan under designer Denis Santachiara, before returning to Paris in 1993 to work for Philippe Starck, initially at his own studio and then at Thomson Multimedia electronics group. She worked with Starck for five years before opening her own studio in Paris in 1998.

Crasset’s design approach is research-driven; she seeks out new logic and connections by which to understand the day-to-day world around her. Her eclectic work runs the gamut from craft-based and mass-produced furniture, to electronic music, set design, graphics, and architecture. She collaborates with artists (including Peter Halley), furniture companies, government organizations, and others. Notable projects include Teo Snoozing Stool (1998); Sunic Perfume Diffuser (2002); the Phytolab (2002) bathing spaces for Dornbracht; the HI Hotel in Nice (2003); and Permanent (chaise) (2013).

Her work is included in prestigious public and private collections worldwide, including the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst (MAK) in Vienna; the Museum of Decorative Arts (UPM) in Prague; the Centre National des Arts Plastiques and the Centre de Georges Pompidou in Paris; Museu do Design in Lisbonne; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.